Wikipedia

Einkorn wheat

Wild einkorn, Karadag, central Turkey

Einkorn wheat (from German Einkorn, literally "single grain") can refer either to the wild species of wheat, Triticum baeoticum, or to the domesticated form, Triticum monococcum. The wild and domesticated forms are either considered separate species, as here, or as subspecies: Triticum monococcum subsp. baeoticum (wild) and T. monococcum subsp. monococcum (domesticated). Einkorn is a diploid species of hulled wheat, with tough glumes ('husks') that tightly enclose the grains. The cultivated form is similar to the wild, except that the ear stays intact when ripe and the seeds are larger.

Einkorn wheat was one of the first plants to be domesticated and cultivated. The earliest clear evidence of the domestication of Einkorn dates from 10,600 to 9,900 years before present (8,650 BC to 7,950 BC) from two archaeological sites in southern Turkey.[1]

Einkorn wheat commonly grows wild in the hill country in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent and Anatolia although it has a wider distribution reaching into the Balkans and south to Jordan near the Dead Sea. It is a short variety of wild wheat, usually less that 70 centimetres (28 in) tall and is not very productive of edible seeds. The principle difference between wild einkorn and cultivated einkorn is the method of seed dispersal. In the wild variety the seed head usually shatters and drops the kernels (seeds) of wheat onto the ground. This facilitates a new crop of wheat. In the domestic variety, the seed head remains intact. Human intervention caused the difference. Harvesting einkorn with intact seed heads was easier for early human harvesters. Thus, over time and through selection, conscious or unconscious, the human preference for intact seed heads created the domestic variety, which also has slightly larger kernels than wild einkorn. Domesticated einkorn requires human planting and harvesting for its continuing existence.[2]

Einkorn wheat is one of the earliest cultivated forms of wheat, alongside emmer wheat (T. dicoccum). Grains of wild einkorn have been found in Epi-Paleolithic sites of the Fertile Crescent. Although gathered from the wild for thousands of years, Einkorn Wheat was first domesticated approximately 10,000 years BP in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) or B (PPNB) periods.[3] Evidence from DNA finger-printing suggests einkorn was first domesticated near Karaca Dağ in southeast Turkey, an area in which a number of PPNB farming villages have been found.[4]

Einkorn wheat cultivation decreased in the Bronze Age, and today it is a relict crop that is rarely planted, though it has found a new market as a health food. It remains as a local crop, often for bulgur (cracked wheat) or as animal feed, in mountainous areas of France, Morocco, the former Yugoslavia, Turkey and other countries. It often survives on poor soils where other species of wheat fail.[5]

^Hopf, M.; Zohary, D. (2000). Domestication of Plants in the Old World: The Origin and Spread of Cultivated Plants in West Asia, Europe, and the Nile Valley (3rd ed.). Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press. p. 38. ISBN0-19-850356-3.